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By Valentyn Ogirenko and Anna PruchnickaKyiv — Russian air attacks killed 12 people and injured many more in Kyiv and the surrounding region early on Tuesday, authorities said, marking the sixth straight day of intense strikes on the Ukrainian capital.Russia, which began its full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022, has escalated its air attacks against Ukraine in recent months as its progress has slowed on the battlefield.In a new tactic since last week, Moscow has sent swarms of drones to plague Kyiv and nearby areas day and night, killing residents and damaging homes and warehouses. Many of the drones are new, fast-flying jet-powered models that are harder to intercept.Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said Russian drones and ballistic missiles had targeted residential areas and railway infrastructure in the overnight attacks.Drone attackEight people were killed in Kyiv, most of them railway workers, officials said.Four others were killed and 13 injured in the town of Boryspil, outside the capital, during an attack that hit a residential building and other sites, governor Tymur Tkachenko said on Telegram. One of the dead outside Kyiv was an Indian citizen.More explosions were heard in Kyiv on Tuesday morning, when three people were injured in a daytime drone attack that caused a fire at an apartment block, mayor Vitali Klitschko said.“Right now, I think everyone is living one day at a time. It’s especially difficult to make long-term plans because you never know when something like what happened today might happen,” Svitlana, a 40-year-old resident of the damaged apartment complex, told Reuters.“We’ve reached our limit, to be honest. It’s very difficult psychologically, especially when you still have to work during the day. But we’re holding on,” another resident, Diana, 28, said.A couple, Bohdan and Oleksandra, said they were planning to move away from Kyiv this winter.The Russian strikes also targeted a border crossing with Nato-member Romania in the Black Sea region of Odesa. Thousands of families there were left without electricity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.Energy systemForeign minister Sybiha called on Ukraine’s allies to increase economic pressure on Russia and to provide Ukraine with more air defences and support for its energy system. Kyiv is running critically low on the US-made Patriot interceptors capable of stopping Russia’s ballistic missiles, though it recently received a small batch of them.Ukraine’s air force said it downed five ballistic missiles overnight.Russia sent more than 2,800 jet-powered drones against Ukraine in August, air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said, after increasing their use fivefold in July compared with June.Ukraine has also increased its attacks on Russia, targeting oil refineries and logistics infrastructure, including warehouses of online shopping companies.Russian regional governors said air attacks caused a fire in the port area of Ust-Luga, a major export outlet in the northwest, and damaged civilian facilities in the Samara region, home to a number of oil refineries.A civilian was also killed in an attack on Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, the acting governor said.Estonia’s defence forces said drones used in a Ukrainian strike against Russia had briefly entered Estonian airspace. Estonian defence minister Hanno Pevkur said the incident — the latest of a series in recent months — showed how important it was to support Ukraine with air defence assets.Russia’s defence ministry said Moscow hit military and energy facilities in Kyiv and Odesa overnight, as well as regions surrounding these cities.Moving forwardUS-led peace talks stalled this year as Ukraine refused Russian demands to cede territory and as Washington has become increasingly preoccupied with the conflict with Iran.Zelensky said on Monday he had held a “detailed and constructive” call with US President Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and that the sides were working to finalise dates for a visit to Ukraine.Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin the war needed to end for humanity’s sake. Putin said Moscow was “moving forward along this path”. Meanwhile, Putin’s international development envoy was quoted as saying on Tuesday the Russian economy runs a risk of going “berserk” if it is run to focus entirely on the needs of the military-industrial complex.The comments by Boris Titov to business news outlet RBC were a rare sign of concern in Kremlin circles about the increasing pressure on the slowing economy to secure a victory in the four-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine.Titov, appointed in 2024 as Putin’s special representative to international organisations for achieving sustainable development goals, is a wealthy businessman who used to own Russia’s leading producer of sparkling wine. He led an influential business lobby and ran for president in 2018.“Military and civilian economies have always existed in symbiosis everywhere. Many technical inventions that are useful for all originated within the military-industrial complex. The key lies in maintaining balance,” Titov told RBC.Russia has hiked taxes, embarked on property redistribution, welcomed contributions from businesses to finance the war, and, most recently, threatened business owners who are not doing enough to protect their facilities from Ukrainian drones.“This is not an economy at all, it’s a kind of ‘berserk mode’ that can only exist for a very limited time, and the necessity of which should be considered very carefully,” Titov said on the eve of a major economic forum that Putin will attend this week in Russia’s Far East.RBC, which conducted the interview, noted that the term berserk derived from mythological Norse warriors who entered a trance-like state, possibly drug-induced, that enabled them to fight ferociously and ignore pain.
